Virtues: A Lesson from the kitchen

Maya Angelou’s poem satirizing health food
purists starts this way:   

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots

And Brussels in a cake,

Carrot straw and spinach raw,

(Today, I need a steak).

A later stanza addresses the main theme:

Health-food folks around the world

Are thinned by anxious zeal,

They look for help in seafood kelp

(I count on breaded veal).

“Anxious zeal” carries an important
warning. Avoid monolithic fixation.
The ancient Greek temple at Delphi offered
a similar maxim:  “nothing in excess.”

Socrates and Aristotle approached the
issue from a different perspective. They
insisted on the “unity of the virtues.”  In
one way the “unity” was definitional. All
virtuous behavior ashared one trait:
knowledge. People who acted virtuously
knew what do do in challenging situations.
In another way the unity was practical.
They believed that living a good life, in the
fullest sense, required the conjunction of
virtues, ideally a unity that included all the
virtues. Being brave, for example, or loyal
did not, by itself, qualify an individual to be
recognized as admirable.  Isolating any
single factor, even if initially benign, would
lead to its metastasizing. In the end, the aim
of living a good life would be frustrated
rather than served. Without the unity of
virtues, a life could not be described, on
the whole, and unqualifiedly, as
praiseworthy.

Still, the word “unity” in “unity of virtues”
is problematic. It’s not possible to combine
all virtues in a single unified synthesis. This
is especially so since some virtues clash
with each other. Loyalty is good. So is
honesty. Sometimes, loyalty and honesty
clash.  This is even more the case with the
mercy/justice pair. Maximize one and, by
necessity, the other is minimized. Bottom
line: the phrase “unity of virtues” is getting
at something important, but the exact
phrasing is problematic.

Here is where Angelou’s warning about
“anxious zeal” in the context of food
can help. Blends and combinations
underpin good cooking. When we think of
food, we are set in a context where
multiplicity is the rule. (1) There is
multiplicity in terms of ingredients: many
vegetables,,fruits, spices, herbs, meats.
 (2) The sought-after dish is also typically
multiple: taste is important, so is
presentation, and, of course so is health.
(3) Some combinations work better than
others. Some blends just work against
good taste.

Since multiplicity is pervasive with regard to

food, a term like “unity” is problematic.  It
can be understood as encouraging the

focus on a single factor, e.g. health isolated
from taste.  It can also be understood as
encouraging an all-encompassing
combination which forces them into a
unity of all possible factors. Such a unity,
as with “unity of the virtues” is impossible
in practice, if only because some of the
elements are incompatible. Neither unity as
isolation of a single factor, nor unity as the
conjunction of factors, offers a helpful
approach. Instead of unity, it is better to
speak of “harmony.”  Besides allowing
more flexibility as regards blends, harmony
allows for a more graduated scale than the
all-or-nothing connotation that accompanies
“unity.”

“Anxious zeal” revolves in the intellectual
solar system whose sun is “unity.”  It
isolates a single factor at the expense of
others. Thinking in more ancient terms, it
also violates the the Delphic advice to do
“Nothing in excess.” How to avoid “anxious
zeal,” and respect “nothing in excess”?
Update the philosophical advice about the
“unity of the virtues.” In particular,
substitute “harmony” for “unity.”

Harmony’s advantages: (a) It takes account
of what is inevitable, the tug of multiple
virtues. (b) It says “do not isolate one
element,” especially “do not isolate one
element to the degree that the others are
occluded.” (c) It recognizes natural and
inevitable incompatibilities. (d) It replaces
an absolutist scale for one which makes
room for more-or-less, better-and-worse.  

In a sense, going back to Angelou,  it’s like
better-and-worse as regards a meal.  If the
food is healthy, that is a good thing. If it is
healthy, but tastes bad, that is not good.  
Healthy and tasty, is better. If it is healthy,
tasty, and shared with good company, that
is better still.  The food/virtue overlap
allows for important updating of “anxious
zeal,” “nothing in excess,” and the “unity
of the virtues.”  Rephrased, these would
read: either “zeal for harmony,” “everything
in balance,” or “optimal combinations.”